> The only real problem with the "troops home now" slogan is that it
> sounds so petty and uncaring that it embarasses even the troops. The
> right slogan would be "Let Iraq Be Free Now." And if someone asks you
> want that means, say Let them vote and let them decide. That's very
> hard
> to argue within the American moral framework. Saying it's not our
> business, we're evil -- those things call out tropistic opposition.
> They're rhetorically design to repel people.
>
> Who makes our slogans anyway?
Didn't you know? They're made in the fully automated factory of Slogans 'R Us, Inc., boasting the latest computer-controlled apparatus for churning out DOA replicas of the beloved leftie Golden Oldies you smiled and hummed along with back when you were in knee britches.
Seriously, though, you're right that most of the antiwar movement has not exactly shown a high degree of skill in its agit-prop activities. All the movements four decades ago that achieved any sort of success -- civil rights, feminism, etc. -- argued within the American moral framework, as you say. The basic template was: "X contradicts a basic moral principle we all believe in [where "we" is not a narrow left sect, but includes the middle range of public opinion]; it is unjust; therefore it has to go."
But a large segment of the left, observing less progress than it hoped for, became increasingly alienated from that moral framework. It also became more and more vocal, eventually shouting down the activists who continued to try to use the moral framework. In the end, "activist" became synonymous with "person who thinks that spitting in the face of the people one is talking to is the best way to convince them to agree with one."
Of course, one problem with trying to use this more subtle approach in the antiwar field is that the conventional American moral framework on war -- and this is true of nearly every other country as well -- is that that framework says: our country, right or wrong. Criticism of government policies is very easily portrayed as criticism of the troops, who are off in Wherever-stan dying while the critics are safe at home. So you have to be extremely light on your feet to come up with slogans that can persuade believers in conventional morality that they should demand immediate withdrawal. But some families of soldiers now in Iraq are starting to do just that.
This morning NPR had a segment on Woodie Guthrie, in which the interviewer marveled that he was able to be highly patriotic in many of his songs and at the same time highly radical in his viewpoint. This fellow (can't remember who it was, but he was clearly not even a gleam in his mother's eye when Guthrie was singing) obviously couldn't quite understand how those two attributes could be combined. That was certainly long, long ago.
Jon Johanning // jjohanning at igc.org __________________________________ A sympathetic Scot summed it all up very neatly in the remark, 'You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing.' -- Sir Arnold Bax